


God Help Me, Part 4

by ErinGayle



Series: God Help Me [4]
Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Sex Education, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25563058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinGayle/pseuds/ErinGayle
Summary: Fall is beautiful in Bavaria, and Captain K and Freddie are becoming part of their new home.
Relationships: Freddy Finkel/Captain Klenzendorf, Rosie Betzler/Captain Klenzendorf
Series: God Help Me [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819291
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Sunday, September 10

##  September

### Sunday, September 10 

Freddie lay on the shady riverbank watching Karl. They were at a deep pool in the river built over the years by a small rapid. It was late afternoon, and the river sparkled where it rushed up over the rocks. Karl was knee deep in the water with a fly fishing rod the children had found when cleaning out the building. It was a hot day, and Freddie couldn’t believe they’d spent it mapping out a basic compass course and a more complex land navigation course. He’d hoped they would just sleep late having spent the last three weeks, including weekends, with the children on various farms picking more potatoes, onions, beets, and carrots than Freddie imagined were grown in the area. But, no, Karl woke him at five and off they went. 

Karl had tried to teach Freddie how to fly fish, but Freddie wanted no parts of it. He was from a city whose only access to water was an industrial shipping canal. Karl had been amazed to learn there were no fish in the canal, or at least no fish any sane person would eat. Freddie was mesmerized watching a bare-chested Karl continually cast, float, and reel in the fishing line. He made it look so graceful. 

“Hah! I got one!” Karl yelled triumphantly. He carefully reeled in the fish and landed it in the grass. 

Freddie looked down at the long, wriggling, spotted thing. “What is it?”

Karl carefully unhooked the fish and dropped it in a tin pail of water. It swam madly in a circle. “ _Bachforelle **[1]**_. They’re under that snag about fifteen meters upstream.”

“Where’d you learn to fly fish?”

Karl didn’t answer right away. He could tell the truth, vaguely, or have to remember yet another lie. “My grandmother had a summer house in the Alps.”

Freddie nodded. Karl grew up in a city, he ordered custom boots, his parents had a farm they didn’t live on in Franconia, and his grandmother had a summer house. Karl’s family had to have been rich, at some point. Freddie wondered what Karl had done or what happened to his family that he was now completely alone. “What happened to your family?” he finally asked.

Karl walked back into the river. “What happened? The war. The influenza.”

“But, why is your _soldbuch_ blank?”

Karl’s sigh was hidden by his cast. Freddie had respected Karl’s privacy for two years. He deserved an answer of some kind, even if it was a fiction. “Because my father got the sixteen year old maid pregnant, and he was the younger son of a very well-known and influential general. And, his very much older brother was an Oberst on the verge of being a general. He was a young captain at the time. After my mother died, my uncle, who was also my godfather, sent me away for school, and I wasn’t allowed to come back to Germany until after I finished university. Literally, I couldn’t come back into the country. My family didn’t want me, Freddie. I was an embarrassment. The underage maid from Thuringia? Not in that world.”

“And he couldn’t marry her?”

Karl laughed as he cast again. “No. Oh, no. In 1903? He would have been kicked out of the family, impoverished, his title legally stripped, and his commission revoked. The only thing he could have done was immigrate and change his name. My father paid attention to me as he could. He never did get married. I guess he was waiting for the end of the war, which ended for him during an artillery bombardment at Ypres. All I have left of my father is a rosary.”

And a lot of money, Freddie thought. “Why be rich if there’re so many damn rules?”

Karl shrugged. He felt another fish hit and carefully recovered it. As he dropped the second fish in the pail, he looked up at Freddie. “I don’t like talking about my family, Freddie. They aren’t like yours. Your family loves you. Mine? Mine only saw me as a stain on their noble honor all because of something I had nothing to do with.”

Freddie shook his head. If Karl’s family could only see him now. Any family should want him. Freddie wondered if his would, if they would want either of them knowing they were gay. “If I go swimming, are you going to hook me?”

Karl thought of at least three pithy yet ribald quips. “No,” he laughed. “I’ll be careful.” Karl kept casting, but he looked downstream and watched a naked Freddie dive into the water. Freddie popped up as a sleek silhouette. Karl smiled to think of Freddie as a river otter. It was what he reminded Karl of: curious, playful, yet efficiently deadly. While Freddie swam, Karl hooked two more fish, graylings this time. He made a fire, cleaned a trout and a grayling, and set them to cooking on an improvised spit. Satisfied he wouldn’t burn down the forest if he went swimming, Karl stripped down and dove in.

“Anything weird live in these streams?” Freddie asked as Karl swam to him.

“Uh, turtles, frogs, fish, eels, maybe a water snake. Otters.”

Freddie wished he hadn’t asked. “Snakes?”

“Don’t worry, about it, Freddie,” Karl said splashing at him. “You’re the one who said I needed to get out in the sun and relax.” He briefly looked back at the fire to be sure it hadn’t expanded.

“Snakes?”

“They aren’t venomous, and they’re normally more afraid of you than you are of them. Besides, you should be more worried about me.” Karl launched himself at Freddie and dunked him. Freddie quickly escaped and dunked Karl back. They played around in the water with each other before getting out and drying off with their undershirts. They sat in the grass wearing nothing but underwear watching the sun slip down. Karl couldn’t help but think about the first boy he’d really fallen in love with. The first time they’d had sex was while swimming on a hot August day in a deserted stretch of the Neckar near Heidelberg. They hadn’t even gotten onto the bank, as if they could hide what they were doing in the deep green water.

“Do you think those fish are done?” Freddie asked. He could tell when fish were done on the stove, but he wasn’t sure about on the spit.

“Hmm?” Karl asked distractedly. “Maybe.” He poked at one with his knife, and it flaked into the flames. The other did as well. His Uncle Otto once had relayed a horror story about people getting worms from undercooked fish. “Trout or Äsche?”

“I don’t know.”

“You eat the trout.” Karl handed Freddie the larger fish. 

Using his pen knife, Freddie pulled off pieces of fish. “This is good, Karl. Bit of a smoky taste.”

Karl smiled. “One of the few things I hate in the world is pickled fish. Take a decent piece of fish and ruin it.”

The woods were dark even if the sky wasn’t when they poured water on the fire and stirred the coals. The _kugelwagen_ wasn’t far, but Karl still checked his map and took a compass bearing. Twilight was deepening when they got in the car, and Freddie drove back to Falkenheim.

[1] Brown trout


	2. Monday, September 18

Magda, who would rather hang out with Freddie Finkle and Gertie Rahm than go to school, was unnerved that Karl was standing behind her little desk where she was arranging conscription notices by most efficient delivery route instead of alphabetically as she’d been told by Gerti. He was staring out the window. “Captain K?”

“Yes, Magda?”

“What are you looking for?”

“Harpies and Sirens,” Karl muttered. He looked over his left shoulder at Magda. She seemed confused at what he had said, and Karl assumed Greek mythology was no longer taught in school. “Maybe a Valkyrie or two.”

“Oh,” Magda said with a laugh. “I thought those were fairy tales.”

“You’d be surprised.” Karl turned back to the window in time to see Rosie fussing over Jojo and forcing a kiss on his cheek before sending him inside. She looked up at the window and caught Karl’s eye. Her accusing eyebrow arched sharply. Karl sighed and barely nodded his head. School had been in session for a week, and Rosie had brought Jojo over every morning. “Well, I believe the Valkyries have passed us by this morning.” He could hear Jojo limping on the steps. When Jojo finally made it into the office, Karl was back at his desk shuffling papers to look busy.

“Heil Hitler, Fraulein Rahm. Heil Hitler, Herr Finkle.” Jojo peeked around the office door. “Heil Hitler, Captain K.”

Karl looked up in faux distraction. He gave a cursory hand wave. “Heil Hitler, Johannes. How’s it going? No, mother this morning?” Karl almost laughed at the smeared lip print on Jojo’s cheek. He’d tried to get away.

Jojo rolled his eyes. “So, anything to help with today?”

Karl tapped his fingers. “Why don’t you sort and alphabetize all those gramophone records?”

“OK.”

Karl turned back to what he was really interested in, devising a strategy game with his toy soldiers to teach platoon and company tactics to the older boys. As he listed out the rules, he lost track of time and paid little attention to Jojo.

Jojo finished with the records and edged out to Gerti. “Hi.”

Gerti didn’t look up from her typing. “Go help Magda.”

Jojo drifted over to Magda. “Hey, Magda.”

Magda looked up from her doodles. She’d finished creating a route for Jojo to deliver conscriptions. “You’ve got lipstick all over your face.

Jojo blushed with embarrassment. He tried to wipe it off with his hand, but it only smeared. Freddie saw him and took out his handkerchief. He gently wiped away the smear. “Thanks, Herr Finkle.”

“I’ve got two older sisters. They tested out their lipsticks on me trying to find the ones that made the best lip prints.”

“Ugh. Two sisters?”

“Actually five,” Freddie laughed. “Yeah, I raced to join the Army when I was eighteen.”

“You didn’t get conscripted?” Magda asked in wonder.

“No, but in 1938, no one thought we’d be in such a long war. You know, crush Poland and a few other little countries, and done. I never expected the German Reich to go from the Atlantic all the way into Russia or from Norway to Greece.”

Jojo was amazed as well. “Your parents didn’t get mad with you?”

Freddie shook his head. “I was the third of six, and only one of my older sisters was married. So, not having as many kids at home was good for them.”


	3. Saturday, September 30

Rosie hurried into the _hallenbad_[1] where Jojo was receiving physical therapy for his leg. She waved at the attendant and went out to the pool deck. Finding Jojo paddling around the pool, she waved to him before sitting on a tiled bench. She heard the men’s locker room door open and bang shut. Karl and Freddie’s laughter echoed over through the warm, chemical air. 

She watched Karl sit down poolside in an alcove. He and Freddie were sitting next to each other, despite no one else being on the bench. She tried to compare Freddie to Karl’s other boyfriends. Freddie seemed too young, but then she and Karl had gotten older. She had no doubt that Karl wouldn’t chase down forty year old widows were he desiring a woman’s company. He’d be looking for a twenty year old blonde girl, and Freddie seemed just the type of young man Karl would have been attracted to when he was in his twenties. Rosie watched how Freddie carried himself. He was at ease crossing his admittedly shapely legs at the knee while sitting, yet he had walked with the same careless, manly stride as Karl. Karl picked up a set of hand weights and began to exercise his right arm and shoulder. She didn’t know if he was using them for vanity or to keep his scarred shoulder stretched. The doctors had said Jojo would always need to exercise his leg and shoulder to keep the scar tissue from tightening. 

Thinking about Jojo, Rosie knew he didn’t want to go back to school. The scars and the whole hand grenade incident were just more things he’d be teased for. He was at the top of the testing list for his class that prior June. Missing more school wouldn’t be so terrible, and she had all the books in the world in her house, many stashed in the attic for Elsa to read to keep up with at least literature and history. 

Karl heard Rosie’s shoes before he saw her. “Oh, God,” he muttered.

“Captain Klenzendorf,” Rosie said with only the slightest bit of polite warmth.

Karl looked up. She was beautiful in the black wool dress with red inset panels and ornate braid on the sleeves. When she was younger, her shoes would have exactly matched the dress. “Frau Betzler. You look absolutely lovely today.”

“You just keep your eye off my wardrobe,” Rosie snapped. “Jojo won’t be going back to school anytime soon.”

Karl glanced at Jojo in the pool. “Really?” he asked, surprised that an assistant headmistress would excuse her child from school for so long.

“No. The scars you caused make the other children tease him.”

“Frau Betzler, I think you are exag—”

“Listen to me, Karl,” Rosie softly snarled, leaning toward him. “You made this mess, and you are going to help clean it up.”

Karl edged back from Rosie. He had no idea what she had hidden under the coat draped over her arm, and he knew she was accomplished with a whip. He bumped into Freddie who began to lean back as well the closer Rosie came to them.

“And, don’t forget I can make your life an unremitting misery if you try to squirm out of it without ever involving anyone official.” Her voice was low and quiet but sliced through the humid air.

Karl was utterly focused on her sapphire eyes. They could have cut diamonds. He wanted to tell her how terrifyingly beautiful she was in that moment. He also suddenly understood what compelled so many doomed heroes despite their better judgement. “ _Javohl_ , Frau Betzler,” he answered quietly.

Rosie stood up. “Good.” She glanced at Freddie and smiled sweetly to him. “Herr Finkle, you’re too cute in that swimming suit. I could just eat you up like an old witch.”

Freddie was too scared of Rosie to do more than titter, “Thank you.”

Karl, though, had noticed the scent of incense. “Frau Betzler, have you been to church?”

“Just never you mind where I go and what I do, Captain. Jojo will see you on Monday morning.” Rosie turned on her toes, gave Freddie a wink over her shoulder, and walked away.

Freddie picked up Karl’s flask from between them. “Why is she so damn scary?” he asked taking a swallow.

“Because she’s drop-dead gorgeous, and she knows how to use it.” Karl already knew the lengths Rosie would go to in order to protect someone she loved.

That evening Freddie stepped out of the bathroom in only a towel. He’d showered at home with his own soap to wash away the chemical smell of the indoor pool. He caught sight of Karl looking at him with a slight smile. “What?”

Karl set down his whiskey. “She’s right.”

“Who’s right?”

Karl walked over to Freddie. He slid his arms around Freddie’s hips, letting his fingers graze beneath the towel’s edge. “You are so cute I could just eat you up like an old witch.”

[1]


	4. Wednesday, October 4

##  October

###  Wednesday, October 4

Seeing Jojo every day and catching mere glimpses of Rosie was an agony for Karl. If they weren’t lovers, he at least wanted to be in her company just to be able to spend time away from uniforms and rank. He had no idea why this resurrected desire for her plagued him. He decided to take the bull by the horns and perhaps end up gored. He waited for her one afternoon by the school gate. Many of the children blinked twice, then said, “Heil Hitler, Captain K.” Karl had never Heil Hitlered so much in his life. More than one mother winked and smiled as she Heiled him. Rosie saw it all from inside the school yard. She tried to oversee arrival and dismissal, as that was when she had gotten in the most fights, mostly started and ended by her. 

“You’re very popular,” Rosie commented as she walked her bike to the street. “I think Frau Schmidt will give you free beer if you give her a quickie now and again.

There had been one leering mother who came very, very close to Karl, and she smelled a little hoppy. “I think I have Hitler’s elbow now. It occurs to me,” he went on, changing subjects. “That we have a common interest.”

“Which is?”

“The well-being of the children. Perhaps we could be more collegial?”

Rosie couldn’t imagine what he meant. “Walk with me.”

Keeping himself on the opposite side of her bike, Karl did just that. “Well, today I wondered where Magda was. The girl is permanently ensconced in the office. She may even have a set of keys. And, Fraulein Rahm mentioned off hand that Magda’s little sister has _windpocken **[1]**_ , and she has to stay home because her mother works at the metal _fabrik_. And, when I asked why Peter Finkle, no relation to Freddie, hadn’t been around in two weeks, Fraulein Rahm again told me that his mother had been called up as a _schwesterhelferrinen **[2]**_ and the children were now in Weiden with their relatives. I’m tired of finding out everything after Gerti Rahm.”

“Well,” Rosie began. “The Rahm’s are a huge tribe in these parts, so she’s actually a great source of information. I didn’t know that Magda’s family had _windpocken_. But, what can you give me?”

“Did you know that I caught Kirsten Kravitz making out with Wilhelm Otterbach? Again?”

“How seriously?” Rosie glanced over at Karl. He was doing his best to get back in her good graces.

“One step from being Frau Otterbach this time. That boy….” Karl shook his head. “And, I see the conscription list before anyone else.”

“Good Lord. Perhaps we could meet a few times a week and compare notes.”

Karl smiled. “That would be highly agreeable.”

“I’m only doing this to help keep the children in school and out of harm’s way. You are still on my shit list.” Rosie stopped walking and got on her bike. “Tuesday and Fridays I’m free. Be in my office when school lets out, unless you prefer a hundred Heils. And, you need to convince Magda Forster to come to school more often.”

Karl looked over at Rosie. “She doesn’t go to school very often, does she? Why? She’s so smart.”

“She went two weeks to the _gymnasium_ and came back to us. She hated the students and said everything was too easy. It’s too easy at the _realschule_ , too. I wish I knew what to do with her, but she’s not going to graduate with anything at this rate. I’d hate for her to be consigned to working in a shop and mothering six kids when she could do almost anything.”

“How many days a week minimum does she need to attend?”

“Three.”

Karl nodded. “Agreed.”

Rosie held out her hand, and Karl shook it. “And, you may kiss hand.”

Karl obliged, and when she withdrew her hand, she winked at him before pedaling off. Rosie smiled and waved over her shoulder. “Tschuss!” She would never admit that knowing he was so close and being so furious with him had been excruciating and reduced her to tears more than once.

[1] Chicken pox

[2] Nurse’s assistant


	5. Thursday, October 5

###  Thursday, October 5

Karl kept an eye on Magda the whole morning. She was almost always busy. In truth, she could probably do Gerti’s job. When he saw Magda return from running to find something elsewhere in the building, he called to her while he stood by his office doors. “Magda, could you come in my office for a few minutes?”

Freddie and Gerti looked up, as did the few other children. Karl realized he was going to have to make a general rule about school attendance.

Magda happily walked into the paneled office. “Yes, Captain K?”

Karl partially closed the doors. “Have a seat, Magda.” He pointed to an old chair and sat down in the tatty armchair near his desk. “Magda, I’ve noticed you don’t go to school very often.”

Magda snorted, rolled her eyes, and tossed a lock of blonde hair off her forehead. “I hate school. It’s so boring. And, at _gymnasium_ everyone was so mean. They made fun of me because I had old shoes and lived by the locks. No one at the _realschule_ makes fun of anyone. Frau Betzler sees to that.”

Karl nodded. “Yes, it was actually Frau Betzler who laid into me about letting all you kids be here so much during the school day.”

Magda half-smiled. For some reason it pleased her that Frau Betzler could intimidate a man, an army officer, too. 

“So, I’m afraid I’m going to have to make a rule that if you want to work in the office, you have to go to school at least three days a week.” Karl was looking to Magda for some amount of agreement. He hung his head a bit and looked upward at her. It had worked on the other women in his life.

“But, I hate school.” Magda’s almost cheery mood dissipated with the angry crossing of her arms.

“And, I understand that. Magda, what do you want to do? Do you want to stay here in Falkenheim and work in a shop or at the _fabrik_?”

Magda hesitated before answering. “I want to make maps.”

Karl was amazed. “You do? That’s wonderful. We always need new maps. I got lost twice driving here from Berlin because our map was old.”

“Not just decide the colors. I want to go out with a transit and find out how tall a mountain is or how wide a river is.” Given permission, Magda’s imagination flew forth. “I want to go down the Congo River in a boat and write down the name of every village, no matter how silly. I want to take a camel across the Sahara and find the old trade routes. I want to ride the train from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok then take a boat to…to Mexico! I want to see the world and make a map of it.”

Karl wanted to grab Magda and hug her as tightly as possible. She was like him at that age. She saw a world of infinite possibility and adventure, not the wretched confines of a hungry, crumbling Reich with enemies at every turn. “And, you can! You just have to go to school first. I know it’s horrible that before they let us pursue our dreams, they lock us in dreary rooms and try to bore the life out of us, but you have to hold on to your dream.” Karl took Magda’s hands in his. “Magda, whatever you want to do, of all the kids here, I know you can do it. You’re too smart to waste those brains on an assembly line or totaling up grocery bills. But, you have to go to school three days a week. You pick which three, and I’ll tell Frau Betzler.” He could see she was disappointed, but possibly amenable. “And, if for some reason you decide you might like to go to school an extra day one week, well, I think we’ll be able to muddle through around here.”

Magda sighed as if she was placating an old and dear relative. She had no intention of enjoying school, but she’d go if it meant she could be in the office two days a week instead of at school or home five. “OK, Captain K.”

“Fantastic,” he said smiling at her. He watched Magda stand up, then she leaned down and hugged him. Karl slowly and carefully returned the embrace. 

“But, I’m not going to like it.

“All I ask is you be there and don’t get in trouble.”

“OK.”


	6. Friday, October 6

###  Friday, October 6

Karl sat down in a desk chair opposite from Rosie. Her desk was still precisely organized. He’d once tried looking for something on her desk in the publishing house and nearly been beaten with a ruler for the cascading mess he caused. Rosie looked over at Karl, studiously avoiding looking directly at her. They both opened their ledger books. 

“How shall we do it? Alphabetically or by age?” he asked uncapping his fountain pen.

“Mine are arranged by class then name,” Rosie answered. “Let’s start with Classe 5. Adelhorn, Elsibet. Her father was hanged by the Gestapo this week, mother arrested, and the children were sent _‘to live with their grandmother.’_ ”

Karl’s list was arranged alphabetically. He found Elsibet Adelhorn and drew a black line through her name and noted the date. “Two siblings? Gertrude and Joachim?”

Rosie nodded. “Andreas, Wilhelm. _Windpocken_.”

“What about the brother, Gustaf?”

Rosie flipped through to an older class. “Yes.”

“At least their mother gets it over with.”

“Betzler, Johannes. Excused due to injury.”

Karl chanced a glance at Rosie, but she was looking down at her attendance book. “Working out very well for Fraulein Rahm and Sergeant Finkle. He and Finkie were setting up the Battle of Waterloo today.”

Rosie barely glanced up. “ _Finkie_?”

“Everyone calls him that,” Karl answered dismissively.

Rosie doubted it. “Dietrich, Florian. Father is dead. Mother is a prostitute and an alcoholic. Usually the boy is wandering the streets looking for scraps.”

Karl simply wrote _Impoverished war orphan._ He glanced at his pocket watch. Seven children had taken five minutes. They only had 487 names to go. 

After three hours, Rosie and Karl both closed their ledger books. Karl had managed to strike 257 names from his roll. No one had cleared it out in years. They were both tired with aching eyes. Rosie opened a drawer and took out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. She poured them both a few fingers. Karl stared at her in shock. He’d never have believed she kept a bottle of whiskey in her desk. They were in a school.

Rosie picked up her glass and handed one to Karl. “To the Fatherland.”

Karl watched her knock back the whiskey in one gulp. “The Fatherland,” he said softly. 

“Uggghhhh, if I have to spend one more minute sitting in this chair, I might snap in two.” Rosie stood and stretched as she walked over to the settee in her office. It was where she tried to have soothing conversations with distraught parents. “Come join me, Captain.”

Karl did as he was invited. They sat on opposite ends of the settee, with their knees almost touching, as they both slouched at the end of an exhausting and demoralizing meeting. Karl stretched his arm out over the back of settee and toward Rosie. He closed his eyes and relaxed his legs. He felt smooth, slender fingers edging across his. He opened his eyes to see Rosie’s fingers intertwined with his. 

“I’m never going to forgive you.”

Karl smiled. “But, perhaps we could enter into a truce?” He traced his index finger over the back of her hand. 

Rosie cocked her head a bit and let her eye take in all of Karl. He was still handsome with a lazy and sometimes sly smile. His hair hadn’t begun to gray at all, and his beard was charmingly rough at the end of the day. If he let his hair grow out some, it would be dragging over his eyes, and he could nonchalantly sweep it away. It was impossible for her to stay angry with him. It hurt too much. She slid next to him and leaned into his chest. Karl easily put his arm around her nestling it over her hip. Rosie let her arm drape over Karl’s. 

“When this is over and Paul is home, we are going to have a proper full dinner. You can bring Freddie.” Rosie tried not to obviously settle her cheek into his chest. 

Karl laughed. He remembered the tense negotiations over the length of her wedding reception dinner. “Seven, nine, twelve, or seventeen courses?”

“All seventeen,” Rosie said as if it were obvious. “With a different wine with each course.”

“Well, obviously, we will start with caviar accompanied by a dry white burgundy.”

Rosie nodded. “Followed by a bisque with a red Viognier.”

Karl tried to think what his mother would serve next. “Eggs Florentine and a Riesling.”

“Farineaux. Oh, a truffle and parmigiana risotto with a red burgundy.”

“Oh, it’s autumn? Then let’s have river trout and a Sauterne.”

Rosie gently inhaled Karl’s scent. He used a rough, basic soap. “Steak Diane with a red Medoc.”

“We’re to the Releve. Go for broke, a boar roast. I’ll shoot it, and we’ll drink a red cote de Rhone.” Karl’s hand moved from her waist to her shoulder. Her hair was soft and smelled of jasmine.

Rosie sighed as she let herself sink more deeply into Karl. “Raspberry sorbet with champagne. Real champagne.”

Karl thought aloud. “Roti course. Duck, shot by me of course, with a Pomerol.””

“Why can’t Paul shoot the ducks?”

“He can help.”

Rosie smiled to herself. After the gun laws were relaxed, Karl and Paul had gone hunting, and drinking, together every fall. “Vegetable course, braised carrots with a Loire chardonnay.”

“Ugh, I’m stuck with salad. Watercress and a chenin blanc.”

“Are you willing to shoot a deer too?” Rosie looked up at him. It was all she could do not to turn his face to hers.

“Of course.”

“Then a cold smoked venison with cabernet franc.”

Karl shifted his legs. The delicate settee wasn’t long enough, and it looked flimsy. Definitely furniture on which to sip tea and chatter aimlessly. “I need to get busy. So, cold sweets. Big Viennese pastry tray and tokaj.”

“Savories. Pate, obviously, with a Beaujolais.”

Karl noted that the office door was not locked. “Cheese. All the cheeses with a white Rhone.”

“Pears for fruit, with champagne.” Rosie stretched her arm across Karl’s waist. It was comforting to be held by a man again.

“We’ve already had champagne.”

“We’ll have it again.”

“OK,” Karl gently relented. “And, finally real coffee with real cream and sugar.”

“I think we’ve eaten ourselves into a stupor.”

Karl laughed. “And, it’ll cost a fortune.”

Rosie sighed and reluctantly sat up. “I need to go home.”

Karl pushed her hair behind her ear. He pulled her back to him for a long and gentle kiss. Rosie pressed her lips firmly into his. 

“I think there’s sufficient lipstick there,” she whispered. She rubbed her hands over his hair and watched it fall back into place. “If you want, come over Sunday night at 10. Jojo will be asleep. He gets up at seven.”

“You’re sure?”

Rosie blushed in embarrassment. “I forgot how much I love having you around.”


	7. October 7, Saturday

### October 7, Saturday

Saturdays for Karl and Freddie were devoted to the fourteen and fifteen year old boys. Karl had divined that they would all be on the conscription list by November. Then he could worry about the thirteen year old boys. Trying to cram in ten weeks of skills into ten Saturdays, Karl often had them out at six am and back by six pm. Today had been map reading and navigation. They had tromped all over the forest and fields to the north of town. Freddie had ruck marched the boys to the area, but they had sent the boys home as a group alone. The patrol leader had briefed Karl on his planned route back, which Karl agreed with, then briefed the patrol. Karl set them off at five pm. He joined Freddie down the hill on a cool, almost cold, stream bank.

Karl sat down and took off his boots. “God, I could use a beer. Did you bring any?”

“No, Karl, because I’m a responsible adult and role model not a teenager.” Freddie lay in the grass with his hat over his face. He didn’t look forward to going home and cooking. Karl could live with bread, cheese, and cold, pickled vegetables. It wouldn’t kill him, Freddie decided.

Karl groaned as he leaned back in the grass. “I’d like to be a teenager again. Not now, when I was one.”

“Why? What would you do differently?”

Karl thought about it. He couldn’t say he’d revolt against his mother and beg Uncle Henrik to let him stay in Berlin. “I’d just bother to enjoy it. What about you?”

“Nope. Not one day.”

“Was it so bad?” Karl asked looking over at Freddie.

Freddie took his hat off his face. How could he explain to Karl that he had to work twelve hours a day for no pay for his parents in order to help keep the whole family afloat? His father had been gassed a few times in the war, and combined with smoking, Freddie had to do more and more of the physical work in the shop. “I left school at sixteen and worked for my parents. But, I didn’t get paid. The only money I had was little tips from deliveries. I wasn’t an adult, but I wasn’t a child. Joining the Army was fabulous. I finally had money of my own. I sent half home, but I could buy a beer or a book without begging my mother for a pfennig.”

Karl nodded. He’d heard the same thing from many soldiers, even young lieutenants with controlling parents. “I understand that.” 

“You think those boys will make it back by six?”

Karl laughed. “I think they’d rather walk to Plzen than admit they were lost.”

“I do not envy the sergeant who got Christoph and Hans, but at least we’re rid of them.”

“Hah! You’d whip them into shape. You just didn’t have time. So, will whoever has them.”

Freddie looked at Karl laughing. He hadn’t done too much laughing in the last weeks. Every child had a tragedy in their lives that they would casually mention, and Freddie would see Karl wilt with mislaid guilt. He guessed Karl was comparing his probably comfortable childhood to the deprivation the children took for granted. Freddie turned onto his side. “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

“I laugh,” Karl mumbled.

Freddie put his hand on Karl’s chest. “Not like you used to.

Karl reached over and stroked Freddie’s cheek. Freddie’s eyes were blue. Not sapphire like Rosie’s but a paler, sky blue from a hot summer day. “So many colors of blue eyes,” he whispered as he kissed Freddie as perfectly as he could. 

“I’ll meet you at the car,” Karl said as he tucked in his shirt.

Freddie nodded, fastening his own trousers. He figured Karl wanted to have a moment of privacy to pee. It was getting cold, and the wind was rising, making Freddie glad their greatcoats were in the back of the _kugelwagen_.

Karl walked downstream and braced himself against a sapling. He held off as long as he could willing himself not to, but he finally vomited. He breathed carefully, and felt another wave coming. He threw up again, but this time his nerves felt calmed. He rinsed his mouth with some whiskey from his flask and spat it into the stream before going to join Freddie. He didn’t know how he was going to get through life if he vomited or lay shaking after every time he had sex. 

They drove back on the cusp of the night, and when they pulled in front of the HJ building, Freddie frowned to see graffiti scrawled on the doors. “Sir,” he said in a tense voice.

Karl got out of the car and started to laugh. “ _The Knights of the Palatine Forest returned to this place from their crusade against the heathen oaks at 5:49 pm Seventh of October._ It’s just chalk, Finkie. We can wash it off tomorrow.”

Freddie half smiled as he pulled the car around the block to park it in the back. They were kids, he thought, and they didn’t deserve to be shoved into uniforms and sent to the front for nothing but a wrecked old man’s vicious ideology. Stupid graf couldn’t even set a bomb correctly.


	8. Sunday, October 8

### Sunday, October 8

Karl tapped on the back door’s glass, and Rosie swiftly opened the door. He assumed she was looking out the peephole. She put her finger to her lips and pointed at the door immediately to the right. Karl nodded and followed her to the front of the house. He hung up his coat and cap then stepped toward the living room, where the small lamp on the table was lit. Rosie hastily turned off the lamp. She took Karl’s hand and stepped up the first step. She nodded for him to follow her, and Karl tried to go up the stairs as quietly as possible. 

At the top of the stairs, he followed her into her bedroom. Rosie turned on the reading lamp and closed the door. Karl glanced around the green room. The Betzlers’ bed was a beautiful modern art deco in walnut with birch inlays on the headboard. He remembered Rosie crying that she had to get rid of her Chinese wedding bed, but he had told her Paul was only being reasonable not wanting to sleep in a bed after their marriage where she’d slept with another man. 

Rosie unbuttoned Karl’s _feldbluse_. He rubbed the back of his hand over her cheek and caressed her hair. “When,” she whispered as she unbuttoned his white shirt. “Was the last time you had a long sit down bath in a tub?”

Karl was surprised. “A bath?”

Rosie nodded. She pushed Karl’s blouse off his shoulders and let it land on the carpet. She slid her hands under the suspenders. “When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, I bought every bar of soap I could find and every bottle of perfume and eau de toilet. Paul was furious. But, I still smell very nice.”

Karl leaned forward and sniffed Rosie’s neck. “You smell like… lilies and…jasmine.”

Rosie took Karl to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered to Karl, leaving him to get undressed. Karl tried to surmise how this could go terribly wrong and decided he didn’t care. He lazily folded his clothes and left them in a pile on a stool. Stepping into the hot water was as much a shock as the daily cold shower. He eased into steaming water, leaned back, and stretched out. It was delicious after months of cold showers, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her he stayed at a luxury hotel for three weeks the past summer. He closed his eyes and let his mind empty. He didn’t hear Rosie come in and take his clothes or when she came back and sat down on the edge of the tub. He opened his eyes again when her hand rubbed over his jaw. She was wearing a peach colored silk nightgown.

“Pleased?”

Karl smiled and didn’t mention the gown. He wondered when she had last worn it. “You were right. It’s been so long I don’t remember. Are you going to leave me to my bath?” Karl noticed Rosie had no trace of embarrassment at seeing him naked. She’d seen him naked since they were kids.

“Are you joking? You might make off with a bar of my extremely valuable soap.” Rosie flicked water into Karl’s face. She picked up a washcloth, dragged it through the water, and squeezed out the water into his hair. Karl closed his eyes and relaxed. He felt her rub the bar of soap over his head and how her fingers massaged his scalp. She carefully kept the soap out of his face even as she rinsed his hair. A soapy washcloth ran over his face and neck, then back behind his ears. Once Rosie had rinsed the soap from his face, Karl opened his eyes and watched her as she bathed him. She didn’t ask about his scars, for which he was thankful, though her fingers lingered on them.

Rosie hung up the washcloth when she was finished. She dipped her hand into the water and slid it over Karl’s thigh. Karl took a deep breath. He didn’t like other people’s hands much past his scrotum, not even a doctor. Rosie kissed Karl as her fingers gently stroked Karl’s perineum. She could feel how tense he was. This still scared him. Karl hated not being in control. Rosie used her other hand and gently gripped his shaft then began to move up and down. Karl closed his eyes. He couldn’t flee without explaining why he could barely let her touch him the way she used to. He had to hold on to something. He set his hands on the edges of the bathtub. Rosie felt Karl fully engorge and used that moment to slide one finger into him and press against his prostrate. Karl gasped and arched his back. Rosie knew how to play with Karl. She brought him close repeatedly.

Karl gripped the tub. As he felt himself edging close again, he barely whispered, “Please, Rosie. Please.” He didn’t want to vomit, and the two feelings of orgasm and vomiting were definitely at war in his body.

Rosie stretched over the cooling water. She grazed her lips over Karl’s forehead. “You have to be quiet,” she whispered. 

“Yes,” Karl deliberately controlled his breathing, more to keep his stomach settled than out of ecstatic urgency.

Rosie intensely massaged Karl with both hands and this time as he came close to a climax, she didn’t force him to pull back. Karl’s knuckles turned white and he bit his lip enough to break the skin, but he finally felt the full release. Rosie floated her hands through the water to Karl’s chest. She smoothed the damp hairs. “I’m going to find you something to wear. There’re some towels on the stool.” She kissed his temple. 

Karl stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t blame Rosie. He had loved it when she did that years ago. The feeling of helplessness had made it doubly erotic to him. But, tonight, he had felt frightened in a way he never had before with her, ever. He didn’t want to do anything that would lose Rosie or tell her about the intense fear he felt now. He waited until he thought he could stand up. He dried off and wrapped a towel around his hips. Rosie was looking through a dresser. Karl came behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “This is a very pretty nightie.”

Rosie smiled as she unfolded a pair of Paul’s pajamas. “Too bad I don’t have anyone to wear it for these days.”

“Paul will be back,” Karl looked over Rosie’s shoulder and watched his hands caress her through the silk. “So pretty,” he whispered as he kissed her shoulder. “And such tiny straps. May I?” he asked sliding one finger under the skinny bit of rolled silk.

“Yes.”

Rosie snuggled naked next to Karl in the bed only she and Paul had ever slept in. She thought she would feel guilty, but she didn’t. She had yet to feel any guilt over sex with Karl. She knew he needed her to ward off suspicion. She could see the glint of the gold wounded badge on Karl’s _feldbluse_. “How many times have you been injured?” She had seen but not counted the many scars on Karl’s body. 

“Five, including the eye.”

“Five?”

“I don’t like to remember them. This hasn’t been some grand adventure. It’s been a slow going meat grinder eating up men. Me among them.”

Rosie sighed. She lifted her head from Karl’s chest and kissed him. “What’s going to happen in the end?”

“If we’re lucky, the city will be surrendered to the Americans. If we aren’t, the Russians will get here first.” Karl ran his hand over her hair. He didn’t tell her that the Russians generally executed officers and raped every woman they could find regardless of age. For the first time, he personally worried about that.


	9. Monday, October 9

###  Monday, October 9

Karl slept lightly like when he was at the front. Every time Rosie moved, he came fully alert. It was tiring, but Pervitin would help with that. When the clock read 5:45, he got up and made sure the covers were pulled up around Rosie. He found his uniform properly hung and ready for him on the valet stand. His boots were perfectly placed next to it in a tray. He went into the bathroom, and after relieving himself, looked in the medicine cabinet. A shaving mug, decorated with flowers and “Paul” in blue script, and a razor awaited their owner. Sighing, he closed the mirrored door. He’d shave when he got home. Karl dressed but didn’t put on his boots. He carried them downstairs and put them on there. He heard bare feet on the steps behind him.

“Hey, did you think you were going to sneak out of here?” Rosie sat down on the stairs next to him. She leaned over and kissed him. 

“I was going to try.” Karl stood up and pulled on his coat. Rosie set his cap on his head. “You need someone to take care of,” he told her as his hands settled in the small of her back.

Rosie playfully tapped Karl’s nose. “I have Jojo.”

Karl hugged her. “You need a man, Rosie Betzler.”

Rosie smiled and winked at him as he opened her door. He stepped into the cold, dark morning and turned up his collar, listening for the lock to turn behind him, surveying the street in front of him. Once he heard the lock turn, he walked away nestled into his coat.

Freddie pressed the cold washcloth on his eyes in order to not look like he had spent half the night awake and crying. He waited until Karl was on the second flight of stairs to toss the washcloth in the small bathroom sink. He wanted to saunter out as if nothing had upset him at all. Karl unlocked the apartment door and walked in tiredly.

“Oh, you’re back,” Freddie said as casually as possible as he came out of the bathroom buttoning his cuffs. 

“Yes, I am.” After hanging up his coat and hat, Karl walked over to his crisply made bed and fell into it. He lit a cigarette and smoked it lying in bed.

“She can’t be that demanding.” Freddie said sitting down on the edge of Karl’s bed.

Karl looked up at Freddie. His eyes were red and dark beneath. He’d been up and probably crying for a while. Karl barely shook his head. “I’m not talking about her.” 

Freddie was almost happy that Karl’s night hadn’t been restful. His certainly hadn’t. Freddie had an eye and nose for flowers. “You smell like lilies…and jasmine.”

Karl sighed. “Freddie, enough.”

Freddie heard a tired yet hard edge in Karl’s voice, but he wanted to know who Karl was sleeping with this time. Karl had never named names, but Freddie could watch him with other men and know. Other than Walther Krieger, he had a mental list of officers from around the regiment and the division he was certain Karl had slept with. He couldn’t quite tell about the women employed in the headquarters. Karl had always said he steered clear of the _helferinnen **[1]**_ , but Freddie suspected Karl had a different attitude toward the local women.

Karl finished his cigarette and got up. He changed his shirt to a freshly starched and ironed one. After he’d put his blouse back on, he came up behind Freddie, who had begun frying some bread. “Freddie,” he said softly as he set his hands on Freddie’s shoulders. Karl leaned his forehead on Freddie. “You know what happens if they suspect us. It’s not just jail anymore. No one comes back. _We_ _need her_.”

“You never say you love me,” Freddie haltingly whispered. He flipped the bread over in the iron skillet. “Karl, have you ever loved anybody?”

Karl sighed. He nestled his cheek in the crook of Freddie’s neck and hugged him tightly. He hated when his lovers asked if he loved them. He was always afraid of disappointing them. Karl kissed Freddie’s cheek. “I’m trying to protect you,” he whispered before kissing Freddie again. He smoothed his hands over Freddie’s arms and left him to cook their breakfast. Freddie could barely hold back the hot tears that ached in his eyes. He did not dare look over his shoulder until he heard the door softly close. 

Downstairs in his office, Karl opened the locked drawer in his desk and took a Pervitin from the stash Freddie didn’t know about. He saw the barbiturates in their small vial. Rolling the vial under his finger, Karl knew what he needed to do to for Freddie. After taking barbiturates, Karl knew he would be relaxed enough that he could let Freddie be in control.

Freddie smoothed Karl’s hair as he held him. Karl was curled up on his side, shaking a bit and slightly sweaty. “Are you alright, Karl?”

Karl could barely put a thought together right now. Barbiturate and too much whiskey after supper had relaxed his body and muddled his thoughts. He’d gotten through it though, and that’s what mattered to him right now. He couldn’t tell Freddie that he found being sodomized terrifying. And, he couldn’t lay there and cry about it. He felt Freddie snuggle into his back. “I’m fine. You enjoyed it.” Karl reached over his shoulder and squeezed Freddie’s hand.

Freddie smiled. “I did.” Freddie believed that full receptive anal intercourse was the essence of being a gay man. He never understood Karl’s aversion to it but assumed it was because Karl hadn’t truly come to terms with being gay since he did still have sex with women. “I’m always so jealous of older men who got to live through the 20s in Berlin. Imagine being able to be exactly who you are.”

“Plenty of brownshirts around back then to beat the daylights out of you. They didn’t even have to be brownshirts. Anyone would.”

“Were you in Berlin back then?”

Karl sighed and turned over to face Freddie. “Yeah, I was.”

“No wonder you knew so many places to go. Tell me about it,” Freddie asked excitedly. 

“I was young, out of university, moved to Berlin. Had boyfriends, lovers, fantastic apartment. Loved my job. Eventually had my own business.”

“You weren’t in the Army?”

“No. All the champagne you could drink, all the cocaine you could snort, all the shows and dancing you’d ever want. Not to mention making out on sunny afternoons in the Grunwald and skinny dipping in the _sees_. It could be a twenty-four hour party, year round if you had the stamina for it.” Karl didn’t mention that he also had a wealthy family to fund what his paychecks didn’t cover.

“Did you?”

“Why do you think Germany consumed 80% of all the cocaine in the world back then?[2]”

“I was barely in _grundschule_. All I ever heard was that Berlin was a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing on Berlin. I had my first real, real boyfriend. I didn’t have to hide that he spent the night with me, although my neighbor always gave me the evil eye. My girlfriend was an exotic paramour.”

Freddie pushed himself up on his elbow. “Your girlfriend?” he asked skeptically.

“Why not have both?” He saw Freddie’s eyebrow arching in what Karl knew was disappointed condescension. “He was jealous of her, too. Schatzie didn’t care. She and, god what was that girl’s name? Dulcie? Anyway, she was a woman with a whip who was available for exotic discipline and dominance. Dulcie was her assistant. That and she went to university.”

“She was a prostitute and a student?”

Karl shrugged. “Cocaine.”

“What about your first boyfriend?” Freddie knew he might never again get a chance to learn anything of Karl’s past. 

“Oskar,” Karl lied. “Oskar was a banker. Not a teller. A real banker. He managed big business loans. He was almost thirty. A veteran of the Great War. So handsome. Blonde, grey eyes with long eyelashes, and good hands. They weren’t rough, but you could tell he knew how to use a rifle and hand tools.” The only truth in those sentences was that Albrecht was a veteran of the Great War who could shoot. Any night he spent with Karl ended in time for him to get home before his wife got up at five. 

“Why did you break up?”

“Because he wanted full reciprocal ass fucking as well. And, one night I was sufficiently drunk and high. But, the next morning it was really bad. I begged Schatzie to skip her classes I was so sick. She took me to the doctor then took care of me for weeks while I healed up.” Karl smiled to remember those weeks. He had felt an emptiness in his apartment after Rosie went home for good. 

Freddie’s mouth hung open. “He hurt you that badly?”

“Doctor said the only time he saw those kinds of tears was when small women gave birth to really big babies.” That was also true.

Freddie’s mouth formed a sad pout. “You poor thing.” He bent down and kissed Karl. “I thought you were just being overly dominant.”

“Schatzie told me no more ass fucking boyfriends without her approval.”

Freddie rolled his eyes. That was why gay men didn’t need girlfriends. “That was a little presumptuous.”

“She always picked good ones for me. Probably because they knew she would come after them like a vengeful Fury.”

“A fury?”

Karl sighed. “A female Vithar. The one who kills Fenrir at Ragnorak? Anyway, it’s not like she bestowed me upon them. She told me which ones seemed better to her. Never heard from Oskar again, though.”

“So, what happened to your girlfriend and Dulcie?”

“I stupidly introduced my girlfriend to her husband and didn’t get to sleep with her anymore. Dulcie was actually Katerine’s? Karlotta? Charlotte, maybe? Anyway, she was the prettiest lesbian I ever knew. Gorgeous. Blond, blue eyes, perfect figure, sweetest smile. I used to tell her she looked like a Rhine Maiden. She and her girlfriend threw themselves off the Lorelei in 1933.”

“That’s terrible,” Freddie gasped in a horrified whisper.

“In 1933, you either immigrated, got married, or got celibate. Or, put yourself out of your own misery. It was in the papers as two city girls foolishly climbing the rock in winter and slipping and falling. Schatzie was beside herself. Dulcie was her daughter’s godmother.”

“What did you do?”

“Me? I joined the Army, and you joined the _Jungend_.” Karl patted Freddie’s cheek and kissed his lips. “I have to take a shower.”

Freddie lay down and watched Karl walk into the bathroom. “ _Gottverdammt!”_ Freddie heard Karl yell. Freddie laughed a bit. If Karl was ever going to have last words, God was probably going to feature, as the Deity was often invoked.

Karl hastily showered and hoped the nausea would go away or the sound of water would cover the retching. He wished they could either find enough fuel for the boiler or find a tub and boil water on the stove as his mother had the maids do when the family moved to the old hunting lodge in Franconia. He hadn’t thought about Lise and Margot in years. 

[1] Female helper. The Nazi government recruited women as an auxiliary force for both civil and military duties. Generally, women were used in communications, air defense, prison and KZ guards, civil service such as fire brigades, and government office support. They were not supposed to ever be in direct line combat.

[2] Germany refined 80% of all the cocaine in the world in the 1920’s (Ohler, 2018). Merck Pharmaceuticals was the industry standard and leader. Karl didn’t personally consume that much.


	10. Wednesday, October 11

###  Wednesday, October 11

“Bad news, sir. Fraulein Rahm won’t make it in the rest of the week. All her kids have _windpocken_.” 

Karl just shook his head and sighed as he walked through the office with a cup of coffee. Freddie was at Gerti’s desk catching up on her typing. “Better her than us. God, I remember having _windpocken_. They were everywhere.”

Freddie nodded. “With Gerti not here, it means one of us has to give the Madel class, sir.”

Karl shrugged as he walked over to the windows. Jojo should be arriving soon. Rosie would walk by with him. Karl assumed the girls were having a sewing class. “What’s on the schedule for today?”

Freddie opened a folder. “Labor and delivery,” he answered simply.

Karl wasn’t really listening. “Labor and delivery of what?”

Freddie stared at Karl. “Babies, sir.”

Karl choked on his coffee, and Freddie winced to think he’d probably go change his shirt. Karl could create laundry out of thin air. “What?”

“Childbirth.”

“God, help me.” Karl walked back to Gerti’s desk. “Does she have posters?”

“Says so, sir.” Freddie and Karl looked around the shelves behind Gerti’s desk

“Heil Hitler, Captain K and Herr Freddie,” Magda sang out as she walked into the office. 

“That girl is as regular as Swiss watch,” Freddie whispered to Karl. “Heil Hitler, Fraulein Magda,” he said with a smile over his shoulder. “Magda, where are the labor and delivery posters?”

Magda groaned. “Those? They’re terrible. They show a baby floating in the mother’s tummy, and then the whole family is around a bed showing off the new baby to a Party member. Fraulein Rahm said you just go to sleep, and the baby pops out on its own. Even I know that’s not what happens.”

Karl and Freddie exchanged knowing glances. “Ok. Sergeant Finkle, call the hospital and see what they have. I’ll call the school.” Karl was glad to get an excuse to call Rosie.

When Karl went to the school to pick up an anatomy skeleton, Rosie wasn’t in her office. The secretary, Frau Krauter, mentioned a small dust up between two girls over a boy. Instead, Herr Gottlieb waved Karl into his office. “Captain, I’ve been hearing about you from the children. Please, come in. Have a seat.” 

Karl smiled. He didn’t have anything else to do. He and Freddie had flipped a coin to see who would give the Madel class; Freddie won and declined. “Headmaster, it’s so nice to finally meet you. The torte was delicious by the way. Please let Frau Gottlieb know how much we enjoyed it.”

Herr Gottlieb smiled. He’d received a handwritten thank you note, with excellent penmanship, from Karl the day after Rosie took the torte over and immediately wondered if he had been a hasty in his judgement of the new HJ leader. “So, I hear you’re giving the annual labor and delivery lecture.”

Karl shook his head. “I went to Catholic schools. This is all very strange for me.”

“It’s strange for all of us,” the headmaster consoled. He offered Karl a cigarette, and Karl accepted. Once they were both smoking, Herr Gottlieb went on. “I was a math teacher before the last war. They thought that would make me good at artillery. And, I was a math teacher afterwards, but standing at the front of a class all day with this leg was so difficult. That’s when I became a headmaster. Started in a _grundschule_. We used to tell the children that the fairies brought babies. None of this blood and gore.”

Karl nodded. “Artillery?”

“Yes. Damn Americans hit our battery. Gun carriage collapsed on my leg.”

Karl nodded. He’d seen the portrait in the entrance hall. Herr Gottlieb had spent years on the front and came home a decorated captain with one leg. “My father died at Ypres. Infantry, of course.”

“That’s an interesting accent you have there. Where did you grow up?”

“Berlin, but then I was sent away to school in French Switzerland. My mother wasn’t the most educated woman. She was from Thuringia, I believe. Just a maid. A little too much Rixdorf the Jesuits had to beat out once they got hold of me.”

“ _Give me a child for seven years, and I will give you the man_. The Jesuits did a good job. I had a few boys from Rixdorf in the gun crews. You don’t seem much like them.”

Karl smiled. “I am the embarrassing bastard child of a wealthy, noble family. But, once my father died, I become slightly more important to them. Not enough for their name, mind.”

Herr Gottlieb nodded along. “A lot went wrong after the last war. One thing I think went right was abolishing the monarchy and the prerogatives of the nobility. I’ve never held with socialism, but I do like the idea that all children should be fed and housed decently and educated beyond the basics no matter who their family. You never know what brilliant idea will come from an educated mind. Look at the Americans.” Herr Gottlieb tapped the ashes from his cigarettes. “We lost a lot of Classe ten to the _Heer **[1]**_ over the summer.”

Sighing, Karl nodded. “Prepare to lose more from the ninth and even the eighth,” he said quietly. “I’m going to do my best, but there are some things boys aren’t meant for.”

“I understand.” Herr Gottlieb looked in Karl’s eyes. The bad one still tracked with the good one. “Your sergeant, Finkle is it? I feel I should warn you that a number of the girls have their sights set on him.”

“Good Lord,” Karl exclaimed softly. “Well, I can tell you he won’t be interested in them.”

“Already has a wife or sweetheart?”

“Five sisters. If he never sees another pair of lace underwear, it’ll be too soon.”

Herr Gottlieb laughed. “He’ll change his tune one day. They all do.”

Rosie walked into the main office and heard Karl’s gentle chuckle. It was painful how much she missed hearing it. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t change his tune around here,” Karl said.

“Girls today. So forward. Of course, they have to be with the conscription rate.”

Rosie walked into her own office, slightly jealous that Karl was with Headmaster Gottlieb. She sat down at her desk and began to write up the agenda for the weekly faculty meeting. Captain Deertz wanted to talk to the teachers about some nutty yet dangerous thing. She and Paul hadn’t socialized with him before the war, and she certainly wouldn’t afterwards. She half hoped the Allies would imprison the Gestapo in whatever place they had sent all the Jews. The other half of her wanted to see the entirety of the Gestapo shot in the street. She tried to keep that half under wraps. 

“Frau Betzler,” Karl said cheerily as he walked by her office on the way to collect the skeleton from a biology classroom.

“Captain. Dropping by for a visit?”

“Picking up the skeleton.”

Rosie smiled. He’d already explained the situation. “Well, have fun.”

Karl leaned on the office door. “You don’t happen to have any anatomy posters that detail labor and delivery, do you? Shockingly, the military hospital doesn’t.”

“Captain Klenzendorf,” she said in a reproachful tone. “This is a school. We’d never have such scandalous pornography here.” Rosie gave him a wink though. “For that you’d have to visit Herr Thaller, at the library. Regular den of iniquity he’s running over there.”

Karl suppressed a smile and not very well. “Have a good day, Frau Betzler.”

Inspecting the chalk drawings Freddie had copied from an anatomy book suggested by Librarian Thaller, Karl was amazed at how well Freddie could not only draw but enlarge and simplify. “These are really good, Finkie.”

Freddie saw all the flaws. He wished he’d had more time and colored chalk. “I didn’t do all the shading as the plates.”

“Much better than the BDM official posters.” Karl had taken the time to read the actual process of a natural labor and delivery and made notes. “I’m going upstairs to get a drink.”

“You really think you should, sir?”

Karl sighed. “I really don’t think I can do this without one.” As Karl walked into the entry hall, he heard murmuring and laughter from the steps to the basement. Quietly, he walked to the back doors and looked down. “Otterbach!”

Wilhelm Otterbach jumped a bit, and his hand fell from around the girl he was kissing. They both looked behind them. “Captain K,” the boy said nervously.

Karl looked at the blond girl. “You’re not Kristin Kravitz or Liliana Eckhardt. You’re…Helga Schmidt.” Karl stared in confusion at Wilhelm. “Helga, is there any reason you’re in this building this early for the Madel class other than to make out with Otterbach?”

Helga blushed bright red. “No, sir.”

Karl sighed. “Go upstairs and see if there’s something productive you can do while you wait.”

Helga carefully got up and walked past Karl. He saw her wink at Wilhelm, though. Once she was on the steps, Karl sat down next Wilhelm. “That’s the third girl I’ve caught you making out with in my building. Why here?”

“Well, at school, Frau Betzler smacks you with that whip of hers.”

Sighing even more heavily, Karl rubbed his hands over his head. “There are no back stoops, parks, or shady trees in this town?”

Wilhelm shrugged.

“And why so many? Are you trying to make out with your entire class?”

“Well, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince. I guess it’s the same for a princess.”

Karl couldn’t fault the logic. “Why are you looking for a princess at thirteen?”

Otterbach took a deep breath. “The Führer said that every German man who goes to the front should make sure he leaves at least one child for the Reich.”

Karl was so stunned he couldn’t breathe, and he felt his eyes stretch open much further than he thought possible. “NO! No! No! No! That was not meant for you!”

“But the Führer—”

“I know what the Führer said,” Karl sharply interrupted. “He said that to twenty, twenty-five year old men in 1939, and it wasn’t a good idea then. That was never meant for thirteen year old boys. The last thing you need to do is have sex with a girl to get her pregnant because of an idiotic propaganda poster.” Karl saw Wilhelm’s face begin to fall. “Look,” he continued more gently. “I’m not married, and I don’t have kids. You know why?”

Wilhelm shook his head.

“Because my father was an Army officer, too, and he was never home, even before the last war where he got himself blown to bits in Belgium. He left my mother to clean, cook, and run a huge house, deal with his enormous family coming and going like the place was a grand hotel, settle all sorts of squabbles between adults who should have known better, and raise me. And, when she died a year after my father, I had no one left but some relatives who shipped me off to boarding school instead of keeping me with their own children. It wasn’t fair to me or my mother. And, it certainly wouldn’t be fair to either a fourteen year old girl or her parents to saddle her with a baby before she’s even finished school.”

“But, you said you were making us into men.”

“ _Making:_ the process of creating. You’re becoming a man, but it doesn’t happen overnight, and it certainly doesn’t happen just because you can procreate.” Karl actually doubted whether a thirteen year old boy could get a girl pregnant, but he didn’t say it for fear Wilhelm Otterbach would test it. “Would you say Christoph and Hans were men? They’re sixteen, off at indoctrination camp now.”

“They’re assholes.”

“Watch your language,” Karl snapped. “But, you’re right.”

“I don’t want…I don’t want to go and never come back,” Wilhelm admitted in the wavering voice of the boy he still was.

Karl put his arm on the boy’s shoulders. “No one does, Wilhelm. No one does. Look, kiss all the girls you want, but keep your pants buttoned. Ok? You pay attention in school, in _Jugend_ class, and when we go out to the field on weekends. And, if you’re time comes to go, you do exactly what your sergeants tell you. That’s the best way to come home.”

Wilhelm could barely mutter, “Ok,” he was on the verge of tears. 

Karl offered him his handkerchief, but Wilhelm had pulled out his own. It had an embroidered _W_. “Nice handkerchief.”

“My mama made it,” he said wiping his eyes.

“No babies?”

Wilhelm nodded.

“Alright, then. I have to go be a hypocrite and tell the girls how childbirth actually works. Go home and do your homework.”

The girls eyed Karl with a collective smirk. Standing there by the chalkboard with Freddie’s anatomical drawings behind him, Karl felt like a mouse surrounded by hungry yet playful cats. “So, Fraulein Rahm can’t be here today. Are there any questions about how you get pregnant?” he asked nervously.

The girls giggled as a group. Karl was relieved it was only the girls over thirteen in this class.

Magda raised her hand. “You don’t leave enough room for the Holy Spirit?” she said with a nearly malicious grin. 

Of all the girls, Karl thought Magda might give him some leeway. He realized she was just giving him enough rope. Karl smiled. “Well, I think we all remember how the Holy Mother left enough room and look at what happened to her.”

The girls genuinely laughed at his blasphemy.

Karl turned to the chalk drawings. With a pointer he began his lecture, discussing the anatomy of the pregnant abdomen and then the purpose of contractions. “And, as you can see, the baby starts out facing down and to the back, and he starts coming out, then he turns, and the rest just sort of slides out. And, it’s done.” He looked back at hard eyed skeptics. “Any questions?”

Rosie had slipped in the front door and was hiding behind Freddie. “How’s he doing?” she asked in a whisper.

“Started with a blasphemous joke about the Virgin Mary, and it’s been downhill from there.” Freddie looked over his shoulder. He was surprised by Rosie’s gleeful grin. “He could use some help.”

“Are you kidding? I haven’t been this entertained in a long time.”

Gabi Eckhardt’s hand shot up. “Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen a baby born?”

“No.”

“So, you have no idea what really happens?”

Karl exhaled. “I have spent my entire adult life responsibly avoiding finding out what really happens. Kristin?”

“How does the baby know to turn over?”

“Instinct. And, apparently if the baby doesn’t turn over, the shoulder gets caught.”

Helga was nearly bouncing in her chair. “But, how does the baby get past the bones? It’s really small down there.”

Karl looked out the open door to Freddie loitering in the hallway to keep the boys out. Freddie just shrugged. Rosie, still hiding behind Freddie, stifled a giggle. “Well,” Karl moved over to the skeleton. He hesitantly put his hand on the hip bones cognizant that this skeleton used to be a real person. “That’s a really good question.”

“He’s really stuck,” Freddie whispered. “And, I don’t know the answer.”

Rosie sighed. She turned around and looked over Freddie’s shoulder just in time for Karl to see a flash of her hair.

“Is…Is that Frau Betzler out there?” Karl asked

Rosie stepped to Freddie’s side then walked in the room. “Heil Hitler.”

All the girls responded in unison, and Karl just flipped up his hand. 

“So, how does the baby get out?” Rosie repeated. She looked at the skeleton. “Well, unfortunately we have Herr Ludwig and not Frau Maria.”

“There’s a difference?” Karl asked genuinely.

“Yes. A woman’s pelvis is built to have babies. It’s wider, shaped and sloped differently. So…Do you have a doll?”

“No.” 

“Can I have your _feldbluse_?”

Karl glanced at the girls. They were suspiciously interested. He silently took off his blouse and handed it to Rosie, who wrapped it into a pretend doll. And, with that, Karl became her assistant for the rest of the hour. Freddie was also brought in to help hold the skeleton in proper anatomical position as Rosie guided the ersatz baby through the delivery. The girls paid rapt and horrified attention to Rosie’s vivid description of how labor contractions felt and how the baby was gradually pushed out of the uterus and through the birth canal. Not only did Rosie want to inform the girls to counter Gerti Rahm’s incompetent teaching of the past, but she wanted them sufficiently scared to get pregnant in hopes they wouldn’t. She had no illusions about teens and sex, but she hoped they delayed it long enough that most of the girls would finish school and marry a dependable man before becoming mothers. 

“And, then comes the afterbirth.” Rosie finished.

“Which is?” Karl nervously asked. The only baby he’d ever been near at its birth was Inge Betzler, and he and Paul were in a bar until the midwife called for them to come back, by which time Inge was bathed and suitably dressed in a cascade of cotton and lace.

“The placenta that nourishes the baby. It looks like a floppy, deformed brain.” Rosie smiled as she looked out on the dead silent room. 

Karl just stared at her. He turned to see the girls’ wide eyes. “Any questions?”

Magda raised her hand. “Before Christoph and Hans left, they kept trying to get any girl who would to have sex with them. They said it was our duty to the Reich.”

“Those little bastards,” Karl muttered. More clearly he answered, “Any boy or man who tries that line of bullshit on you, tell me his name, and I’ll take care of it.”

Curious, Rosie innocently asked, “What’ll you do?”

He looked over at the girls and back Rosie. “Let’s just say the last thing he’ll be capable of is intercourse or fathering a child with an underage girl.” He saw the girls cover their nervous laughter. “Anything else? No? Well, then, Sergeant Finkle, do you recall what is planned for next week?”

Freddie swallowed hard. “Post-partum menstruation and breastfeeding, sir.”

Karl glanced sidewise at Rosie, who gave a small shake of her head. “And, if Fraulein Rahm isn’t back, sucking chest wounds. Always a favorite. Heil Hitler, girls.”

The girls heiled him back and began filtering out of the classroom. Once they were gone, Karl looked at Freddie and Rosie. “Anyone need a drink?”

Rosie smiled at him and Freddie. “Of course, we do.” Then she turned to Freddie and took him by the arm. “So, Herr Finkle, I hear you have five sisters,” she began as she walked him up the stairs, leaving Karl trailing behind.

“Yes, Frau Betzler.”

Karl shook his head. She’d always flirted with his boyfriends, too. Upstairs, Karl poured them all whiskey. Freddie’s glass was only one finger compared to the several fingers poured for Karl and Rosie, and Freddie only sipped at the liquor.

“Who did those chalk drawing, Captain?” Rosie asked sitting in the ratty armchair.

Karl gestured to Freddie. “Sergeant Finkle. He’d quite an artist.”

Freddie blushed. “It’s just something to pass the time.”

Rosie smiled at him. “Well, I think they’re wonderful. You could have a future in illustration.”

Freddie kept smiling. Illustrating books was something fancy people with art school degrees did not the son of shopkeepers. “I think my future is actually is the wholesale produce trade.” 

“Well, they were really good.” Rosie looked over at Karl’s desk. “Captain, may I borrow your note pad? I left my errand list on my desk.”

Karl shrugged and handed her a small pad and pen. “All I can say is that hearing what we just told those girls when I was thirteen or fourteen would keep me from having children ever. It gives me the shivers now.”

Rosie was containing her laughter. She tore off the pad’s top page and handed it back. “Men have such weak stomachs. Oh, the ink leaked through to the next page a bit.”

Karl took back his pad and tore off the page. He folded it and stuck it in his pocket. Rosie declined a second drink, and Freddie mentioned he needed to run to the bakerei. The two left and walked to the hauptstrasse together. Once he was alone, Karl took the paper from his pocket and unfolded it. _10, Do. **[2]**_ He lit the paper with his lighter and let it burn in his ashtray. He wondered if he and Rosie were embarking on a long-term affair for the rest of his time in Falkenheim. It wasn’t the worst idea, quite a comforting one actually, but Freddie was not going to like it.

[1] Army. _Wehrmacht_ is the general term for the Third Reich’s defense forces. _Wehren_ (to defend) + _Macht_ (force, power).

[2] Do is the abbreviation for Donnerstag—Thursday.


	11. Tuesday, October 31

###  Tuesday, October 31

“Captain Klenzendorf?” Rosie said as she opened the master attendance book. 

Karl had just sat down in the other chair with his ledger book. “Yes, Frau Betzler?” he asked getting out his fountain pen.

“I need a favor from you this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The entire faculty must go to the regional Teachers' Union conference on Saturday in Nuremberg. I need someone to watch Jojo.”

“I see.” Karl shifted uncomfortably. “Sergeant Finkle and I are taking the older boys out shooting on Saturday. Considering what happened last time….”

Rosie nodded. “I really need this, Captain. If I don’t go, I’ll lose my job. I swear on a stack of Bibles he won’t misbehave.”

Karl thought this might be progress with the hand grenade incident. At least Rosie was entertaining the possibility that Jojo was partially culpable. Karl was still reluctant. What could a ten year old do while fourteen and fifteen year old boys were shooting? Help with the ammunition. Help cook lunch. Help put up the targets. Help score the targets. Karl sighed. “What time is your train?”

“5:30.”

“Bring him by at 5. We have to go pick up a truck at the hospital motor pool at 5:30.”

Rosie winked at Karl. “Thank you, so much, Captain.”

Karl just hoped this wasn’t a terrible idea, and he waited until Friday night to tell Freddie.

“You’re joking, Karl.” Freddie stood in the middle of the kitchen holding a sizzling frying pan.

“No, I’m not.” Karl turned the page in the newspaper. “She needs help. I’m help.”

“Really? After August?”

Karl shrugged. “For all Rosie’s prominence, I don’t think she has a lot of friends she actually trusts these days.”

“So, we’re the babysitters?” Freddie turned back to the kitchen dresser and scraped out dinner onto two plates. “Does this mean I have to watch him?” he asked bringing the plates over to the table. 

“Just give him stuff to do and keep him off the range.”

It was easy for Freddie to find things to keep Jojo busy in the office. Out in the field, he thought he might have to put a leash on the boy.


	12. Explanatory Notes

## Explanatory Notes

### The Father Figure

MyCaptain K builds on the demoralized yet compassionate portrayal of the character by Sam Rockwell. Quite honestly, I’ve known guys like Captain K, just not quite so world-weary. In the military, the commander and senior sergeant take on the role of unit Dad. Anyone who approaches those jobs as just giving orders and not connecting personally with the troops is going to fail and end up with demoralized soldiers and terrible retention statistics. In combat seniors have to look out for the well-being and welfare of juniors even more. Sympathy, empathy, and a lot of patience are necessary attributes for a good commander and sergeant. 

Jojo’s father has not been in the home for at least two years and maybe longer. Assuming Paul Betzler did report for duty and was stationed in Italy, he probably hasn’t been home since the family portraits seen in the living room were taken three years previously, in 1942-1943. He may have been called up as early as 1940, and he was only home for brief leaves. Jojo’s father has been missing from his life since perhaps as far back as 1940, when Jojo was six. A lack of a father during these ages is impactful, and it is not at all surprising that the father figure he has created for himself as a best imaginary friend is the biggest celebrity in Germany, Adolf Hitler. 

Imaginary Hitler, however, isn’t a very good father-figure as he is informed entirely by Jojo’s own knowledge and imagination. He is immature, as is Jojo. He gives terrible advice: “Be the rabbit,” “Burn down the house and blame Churchill.” He constantly offers Jojo cigarettes, such that even Jojo asks why he’s always offering cigarettes. Adolf Hitler was a known non-smoker and abhorred the habit, but the Nazi regime couldn’t realistically ban cigarettes even if it wanted to. He demands compliance with Nazi ideology, and at the end of the movie is reduced to the frantic, begging, wheedling caricature in Jojo’s imagination we have seen all along and who Jojo kicks out of his life. Imaginary Hitler’s concern is solely for himself and using Jojo to buoy his self-esteem.

And, along comes Captain K. He may be an over-confident solider with no experience or appreciation for dealing with children as well as an alcoholic, but he is at least one step above Imaginary Hitler. He was the first person to reach Jojo after the hand grenade exploded and remained calm. He isn’t staring down at Jojo, he is on his hands and knees hovering protectively over him. He had to yell for Freddie and fend off Yorkie. 

Captain K also put himself between Jojo and the Gestapo twice. He told Jojo to tell him if he saw a Jew, and he (Captain K) would tell the Gestapo. Whereas, we know that people do call the Gestapo directly per Deertz’s soliloquy on communists and mold. Secondly, when the Gestapo inspected the Betzler home, Captain K rushed over there. Why? He apparently has enough authority not to be kicked out of the inspection by Deertz and enough of Deertz’s trust that no one assumes he would lie about a wrong birthdate. But, he does not have enough authority that he can unilaterally take Jojo and Elsa away from the home. 

Rosie may have forced Captain K to watch Jojo as a personal penance, but her wanting Jojo to have a male role model could have been a secondary concern. Captain K never says anything anti-Semitic or even pro-Nazi, develops a personal relationship with Jojo, and the few times he has a cigarette in his hand when Jojo comes into the scene or he enters a scene with Jojo, Captain K puts out his cigarette. As for his homosexuality, Captain K is portrayed as just another middle-aged man with no stereotypical mannerisms other than being a guy, nor does he ever mention his grief at the loss Freddie, safely assumed to be at least his boyfriend and perhaps his lover.

In Captain K’s final scene, he is calm, maintains situational awareness, reassures and distracts Jojo, and finally physically pushes him away danger. When talking to Jojo about Rosie’s death, Sam Rockwell/Captain K hesitates before saying “I’m sorry about Rosie.” It is probably the most heartfelt line Captain K speaks. What was thought in that pause? Accepting blame that he didn’t or couldn’t save her? Admitting he also missed her? Whatever Captain K’s personal demons, he is an adult and acts in Jojo’s best interests. He is the last adult taken from Jojo’s life. What he doesn’t do is burden Jojo with an adult’s misery.


End file.
